God's Providence (pt-1)

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The providence of God, it's a term we hear a lot. And it's the term that is used to describe or summarize
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God's ongoing relationship with his creation. God has created all things.
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And he interacts with that creation on a daily basis. Now, this position is in direct opposition to the deist who would say that God created all things.
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They would acknowledge that. But he sort of wound the clock up and then sort of wandered off and maybe looks back every now and then to see how his creation is doing.
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But he doesn't really bother himself with it or concern himself with it on a day -to -day basis.
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It is also a direct opposition to the god of the Muslims. One of the things that you will hear if you get into discussions about Muslims, and of course, they're very much on the forefront right now, is that, well, it's the same
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God. It's the same God. You'll hear that a lot. It is not the same God. I can set that categorically.
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The Allah is completely transcendent. That is, he is over everything, but he's out there.
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He is not in contact at all. There is no way to know him. He is unknowable.
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There is no way to relate yourself to him except to just obey and hope that when it's all said and done, he will admit you to his paradise.
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The God of the Christians, our God, Jehovah God, the creator
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God, is transcendent. He is over everything. But he is also imminent.
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That is, he is near. He is touching us. He interacts with us daily, constantly.
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He is actively involved in his creation. He is knowable.
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He has made himself known to us, and he wants us to know him.
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He has revealed himself to us. General Robert E.
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Lee used to make constant reference to the providence of God in his correspondence, in his daily orders.
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Everything he did, he was always making note of the providence of God. And God is continuously involved with all created things.
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The fact that the universe is still turning, that it didn't just dissipate during the night, is a direct consequence of the fact that God, in his providence, upholds all things.
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God cooperates with all created things in every action, directing our distinctive properties to cause us to act in the ways that we do.
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And he directs his creation to fulfill his purpose. Now, there are three subtopics we're going to look at over the next few lessons.
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First is the preservation, God's preserving of his creation. Second is the doctrine of concurrence, that is the idea that God works through his creation.
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And finally, government, not what's going on down in Washington, but the fact that God governs his creation and how he does that.
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Now, notice that there is no other reality in the universe beyond what God has made. What God has made is real.
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It really exists. We are not looking at concepts like you go to the
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Middle Eastern religions and to the Eastern religions and everything is an illusion.
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You're not really hurt, you just think you're hurt. It's like the little boy, his father was known as the town hypochondriac, and one day he met the town doctor and the doctor said, well,
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Johnny, does your dad still think he's sick? And he said, no, dad thinks he's dead. God's creation is real.
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It exists. So first, the doctrine of preservation, what about that? Hebrews 1 .3,
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let's take a look at that one. If someone would, first person to get to it, if someone would read that,
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Hebrews 1 .3, that's kind of a core key verse.
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He upholds the universe by the word of his power. That is an active statement. Jesus Christ personally upholds the universe.
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Why does the universe hold together? Because he holds it together by his power.
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We say the universe works by certain laws, which it does. But he created those laws.
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He decreed those laws to be. And because he is an unchangeable
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God, the laws today and tomorrow and next week and next year are going to be the same.
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The law of gravity is not suddenly going to change, and we go flying off into space.
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This is active, purposeful control, purposeful control. He is actively involved in the work of providence.
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Colossians 1 .17, someone get that one, please. In him, all things hold together.
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Again, a restatement of the same concept that we had in Hebrews. And finally, Acts 17 .28,
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if someone would read that. We live, we move, we have our being.
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We consist in him. He holds us together.
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If Christ were suddenly to stop his work of sustaining the universe, everything that is created would simply cease to exist.
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Think about that. Job, we're going to be in Job a lot. We're going to be in Psalms quite a bit during this study.
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But in Job, chapter 34, verse 14, if he set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath, now this is speaking of God, if God was to gather unto himself his breath, all flesh should perish together, and man should turn again into dust.
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Our very breath comes from him. What does Genesis say about the creation of Adam?
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God formed Adam out of the dust of the ground, and then he breathed into him the breath of life.
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God gave Adam his breath, and he became a living soul. And then
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Job says the opposite statement. If God were to withdraw his breath, we would all simply cease our existence.
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And so God preserves all that he has made and causes all things to maintain the properties that he created for them.
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I have read an interesting book. In fact, I'm still digging through it. Interesting book by a
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Dr. Rodney Stark. Interesting thesis. Book's entitled
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For the Glory of God. Dr. Stark is a professor of history at Baylor University.
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I do not know, and I cannot tell from his scholarly work whether he is a believer or not.
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He might not be. In fact, I kind of guess he might not be. But nonetheless, his thesis is this, that the rise of science, if you look throughout history, science has arisen in one place at one time in history, one time only.
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And that is in Europe. And he attributes this to the fact of Christianity, that you must have a
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Christian worldview for the idea of science to even occur to you, that you would think that science was even possible.
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You look at other societies that have grown up throughout history, societies that have been technological, but they didn't develop science.
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Why not? Because to develop science, you have to have the idea of a creator
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God who created certain properties for everything that's out there. And by experimentation and study and observation,
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I can determine what those properties are. I can, as the men of the 19th century and 18th century put it,
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I can think God's thoughts after him. I can discover what God has created and the laws by which he governs it.
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But that is a uniquely Christian idea, an interesting thesis that the man has come up with.
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Now, as we've already said, created things are real. Their properties are real. And their properties do not change, because God has decreed that to be so.
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That's preservation. Now, concurrence, and this is where we're going to get the most of the next two weeks, is going to be in here.
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Because God accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will, Ephesians 1 .11.
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This is an idea that we're going to have trouble getting our hands around. And I do not expect us to be able to do this, because better scholars than I am, certainly, have tried for a long time.
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And ultimately, you are reduced to saying that God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts,
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God's ways are higher than our ways. But we'll still see what we can discover about this. Because the basic thesis is that all things occur within the purview of God's will.
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Nothing occurs apart from his counsel. Nothing.
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And yet, most of the time, God works through his creation.
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Not always, but most of the time, God works through his creation. When God intervenes directly, we call that a miracle, right?
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Now, first of all, and the Bible is full of, this is the whole thrust of the scripture, as we go through. You say, well, where is that in the
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Bible? It's all through the Bible. The Bible constantly refers to God causing natural, what we call natural occurrences.
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But the Bible says that God causes these. I'm gonna read to you from Job chapter 37, starting in verse six.
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For he saith to the snow, be thou on the earth. He said that a lot last year.
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Be thou on the earth. Likewise, to the small rain, and to the great rain of his strength, he sealeth up the hand of every man that all men may know his work.
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Then the beasts go into dens and remain in their places. Why do the beasts go hibernate in the winter?
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Because God tells them to go. Out of the south cometh the whirlwind, and cold out of the north.
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By the breath of God, frost is given, and the breadth of the waters is narrowed.
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That's ice forms, right? And by watering, he wearieth the thick cloud, and scattereth his bright cloud.
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And it is turned round about by his counsels, that they do whatsoever he commanded them upon the face of the world in the earth.
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He causeth it to come. Whether for correction, or for his land, or for mercy.
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So for whatever reason God sends natural occurrences, they come from God's hand.
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And as the writer of Job is pointing out, these things can be for correction or punishment.
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They can be for reward, or they can simply be because this is what a good
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God does. God sends rain on the just and the unjust. God holds things together.
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Other references to things like this, Psalms 148 .8. Job 38 .22
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-30 talks about the same sort of thing. Psalm 135 .7,
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Psalm 104 .4, and it goes on and on and on. That the inanimate things, what we call natural occurrences.
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But we, sometimes we give, without even thinking about it, we give assent to this idea.
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What do we call it? What does the insurance company call it when a tree falls on your house?
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An act of God, right? They don't call that a natural occurrence, they call it an act of God.
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Something happened, and even in the insurance business, we say, well, God caused this.
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Now, what about random events? There are certain events that appear random to human beings.
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It looks like it just happened. But Proverbs says, in Proverbs chapter 16, and verse 33, the lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the
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Lord. So that even what appear to be random occurrences are actually controlled by God's providence.
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Now, here's where we start to get into deep stuff.
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This topic, even though it's been kind of light up to now, this topic is not an easy topic to go.
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To study, and we're about to get into this, we're about to get into things which are going to sort of make our brains hurt a little bit.
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But the doctrine of concurrence says this, events are fully caused by God and fully caused by his creatures.
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And everybody's going, wait a minute, how can something be fully caused by God and fully caused by man?
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Well, we're going to work on that a little bit, we're going to chew on it, and ultimately we're going to come to one conclusion,
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God's ways are higher than our ways. That's the ultimate conclusion we're going to come to, because we are now starting to step into the realm of the finite creature trying to comprehend the infinite.
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And ultimately we're going to fail, but we're going to look at it anyway. God decrees both ends and means.
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God does not only decree what the end will be, he decrees what the means will be for reaching that end.
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And as we pointed out, most of the time he works through his creation.
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So don't make the mistake of thinking that because we know the natural cause, why something happens, that God did not cause it.
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A meteorologist can tell you why it rains. He can tell you why that particular cloud rained, because we can study the moisture content and the wind patterns and on and on and on.
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But the fact that we understand these things, or the fact that a biologist, a microbiologist, can tell you now precisely how the eye works.
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It's an extremely complicated process, but he can tell you precisely how light falling on the eye causes an image in your mind, in your brain.
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But the fact that we can understand those processes does not mean that God did not cause them.
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The concurrence principle affirms that God directs and works through his creation.
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Therefore, it is correct to speak of an event, a particular event, as being 100 % caused by God and also 100 % caused by the creature as well.
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God also has providential control of human events. The Bible talks about this in great detail.
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The Bible says, Job chapter 12, that the first thing God does is that he raises up and puts down nations.
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Why are the nations of the earth the way they are? Because God has raised them up. Why do some nations fail?
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Why is the Babylonian Empire gone? Why is the Roman Empire gone, the
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Greek Empire gone? Because God put them down. Now, a historian will go along and they'll say, well, you know,
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Alexander did this, and then along came the Romans, and they conquered that, and so forth and so on.
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But history is full of seemingly chance events.
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But the Christian looks at these and says, this is the hand of God at work.
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We can look back in our own lives and say, you know, what I thought of as a random event, why did
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I choose to do whatever it was? Well, that's God's hand at work, because in retrospect,
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I can look back and see that, oh, well, God sent me here so that this would happen, and I would meet this person, and that would occur, and so forth.
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You know, God sent me to El Paso, Texas. Why? So I would meet my wife, among other things.
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And some of the fun things that we can do in our own lives is we can look back, you know, play what if. You know, what if General Chamberlain had not gotten to the top of Little Round Top 10 minutes when he did?
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If he'd been 10 minutes later, he wouldn't have been there when Pickett charged, and the whole
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Battle of Gettysburg might've gone the other way. You can look back through history and see these turning points.
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But we affirm that God causes these things, because God rules over the nations.
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Psalm 22, 28, or Daniel. There's a whole section in Daniel there where it talks about King Nebuchadnezzar, right?
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You remember that? Nebuchadnezzar basically is walking out on his balcony one day, and he's been warned, but he's walking out on his balcony, and he says, look at all this that I have done, and a voice comes out of heaven.
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And whenever a voice comes out of heaven, you're in big trouble, let me tell you. Voice comes out of heaven and says, that's it,
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Nebuchadnezzar. You're gonna go out and live like an animal for seven years until you learn that I rule over the nations, not you.
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And sure enough, Nebuchadnezzar learned that lesson, because at the end of all of that passage, that's what he says.
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He says, I have learned that it's God that sets up one and puts down another. God determines the birth, the death, and the lifespan of anyone who has ever lived.
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We find that repeatedly in scripture. Look at Psalms 31, 15. David says, my times are in thy hand.
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Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies and from those who persecute me. My times are in thy hand.
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Lord, you determined the day of my birth. You determined the day of my death. And so while we are to act prudently, and we'll get into this a little bit later, we are to act prudently, we are not to be presumptuous.
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Ultimately, the time of our death is determined. And therefore, we don't have to worry constantly, because our times are in God's hands.
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Just before, just after, rather, I left Iraq. You may remember there was a group of missionaries who came into a firefight, and there were five people in the vehicle.
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Two of them were injured slightly. Two of them were completely unscratched. One of them was killed. And we have the tendency to say, well, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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No, he was in precisely the place that God had decreed in eternity past that his time would end, because his times were in God's hands.
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And so how would you deal with someone, let's say, who suffered from agoraphobia?
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They're afraid to go outside. Well, one place that you might take them is, look, your times are in God's hands.
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What happens to you is in God's hands. God provides all aspects of life in his providence as he interacts with us.
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First of all, food. What did Jesus teach the apostles to pray?
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Give us this day our what? Daily bread. Give us this day our daily bread.
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He provides every need that we have. In fact, Paul says he will provide all your needs according to his riches and glory, which means he applies everything according to his riches.
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Now, what's the big deal with that? There's two ways to have needs met.
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I can meet your need. Let's say that I am a multimillionaire.
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I'm not, but let's say that I was. And you come to me and you say, you know,
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I have this mission that I wanna get started in this ministry. I think the
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Lord is calling me to do this. I need money to help start up. You know, would you like to be a part of that?
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And I say, boy, I sure would. Here's a check. You look down. I've written you a check for $25.
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Okay, you say, praise God, and away you go. I have given you out of my riches.
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On the other hand, you come to me and you say, you know, same thing. I've got this ministry.
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I wanna start it up. And I say, how much do you think you need? You say, well,
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I really think I need about $50 ,000 to get this started. So I said, well, I do wanna be a part of that.
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And so I write you a check. And after you get out of my office, you look at that, and the check's for $100 ,000.
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I have given you according to my riches. Now, God gives according to his riches.
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He pours out upon us far more than we think we need. And the best part of it is, is that he knows what we do need.
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Frequently, what we think we need and what we need are two different things. And so in his providence, he sees to it that we receive what we need, and that we receive what we need at the right time.
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Because sometimes we think we need things, and we are gonna need whatever this is, but this need, we don't need it now.
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We're gonna need it at some time in the future. But he knows all about that. And so he will provide our needs at the right time, every need.
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And then he provides every day. And he set all this up, this is fascinating.
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He set all of this up prior to the fact, to the time when we were born.
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Look, if you will, at Psalm 139. Isn't it interesting that before the rise of medical science,
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David wrote all of this down. Verse 16, thine eyes did see my substance being yet unformed.
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And in thy book, all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them.
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You get the same idea in Job chapter 14, Galatians 1 .15,
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Jeremiah 1 .5. That before we were born, before we existed,
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God decreed all of these things about us. In eternity past, he decreed all of these things about us.
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He also directs our daily steps. That's Jeremiah 10 .23, Proverbs 20 .24,
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16 .9, 16 .1, many other places in Proverbs, that everything we do day by day by day is directed by God.
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That he directs, he shapes, he molds. Success and failure comes from the
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Lord. Promotion comes from the Lord. Man, are you worried about getting promoted at work?
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Don't be. God will promote you in his time and place. And if God promotes you, you are promoted.
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No, you don't have to worry. You don't have to play the political games. You don't have to do any of that because God is directing this.
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He also decreed what abilities we have. Each of us has different abilities.
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Sometimes we call it talents. Sometimes we call it abilities, whatever. But God has fitted us for the purposes that he will direct each of us toward.
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He has a specific purpose in our lives for us to fulfill.
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And he will equip us for that job, whatever that is. He will see to it that the interests and the training and all the rest of it fit together so that we will be equipped or thoroughly furnished as the
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King James says, to all good works which are what God has in mind for us to do.
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He also sets up rulers. He knows who our boss is.
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And so don't complain about your boss. This is the boss that God has set for you at this particular time for whatever reason, for good or bad.
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Maybe he's teaching you something with your boss. But he is in control of it. So God especially guides the minds and desires of his children so that we will do his work.
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That's Philippians 2 .3. This is the answer to how do I know the will of God for my life?
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It's a very popular subject, particularly with young people. You wanna have a young people, you wanna really keep the young people's attention in the young people's group when you get to talk to them.
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Talk about finding the will of God for your life. Because they think that number one, it's gonna sort of come out of heaven.
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There's gonna be a big thing in the sky that's gonna say go preach or something.
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And so this doesn't gonna work that way. I love John MacArthur's take on this.
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There are certain things which are the decreed, declared will of God, or sometimes we call it the revealed will of God.
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These are things that God has laid down verbatim in scripture. Such things as it is
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God's will that men be saved. That's directed. It is God's will that we not be unequally yoked.
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That's directed. There are do's and don'ts. The Ten Commandments come to mind, but there are other lists of do's and don'ts in the scripture.
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These are things that God has directed us to do. And so we just do them.
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If he says, oh, he says do this, I'll do that, whatever it is. And by the way, young people, don't spend a lot of time praying about something that God has already given you the answer for.
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Don't pray, should I marry such and such, when you know they're not a believer. God has already told you, don't do that.
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You can pray for them to be saved so that you can marry them if you want to, but that's how it goes.
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So then, if you are obeying the revealed will of God and you are walking on a daily basis with him, do what you want.
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Do what you want. Because you can trust God to direct you and to direct your mind and your desires into the paths that he has for you.
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You don't have to agonize over this, the way some people do. You can depend upon God to direct your life for you.
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Now, back to the core statement here. Scripture does affirm that we really, we, us, we do cause events to happen that our choices and actions are real and they carry real consequences.
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Because when you start arguing between Calvinists and Arminians or reformed and whatever you want to call yourselves, one of the arguments is that the
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Calvinist position makes us into robots, that God has decreed what we're going to do and we're going to do that and therefore we can't make a choice.
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That for our choice to be real, we have to have been able to choose the other way.
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And they say, if God has decreed the outcome and predetermined the outcome, then
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I really didn't have a choice. But that's not true. And again, the basic problem is trying to explain the relationship between an infinite
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God and a finite creation. This is, don't sit there thinking
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I'm going to answer this question for you fully because the answer for this question is not going to be found this side of heaven.
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But perhaps we can shed a little light on it. Because God has endowed man with the property of willing choice.
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When he created Adam, he gave Adam a will, he gave Adam a volition.
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Now you said animals also have a volition, but it's not the same as it is for man.
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Man is a moral creature. Therefore, we are responsible for our decisions.
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We make our decisions, you make your decisions in life freely.
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And this, you know, we don't use the term free will around here very much. But there is a definite sense in which your will is free.
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You are free to choose according to your nature and you choose according to your nature.
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But as Shakespeare would say, there's the rub. Our nature is fallen. Unless we have been regenerated by a work of grace in our lives, our nature is fallen.
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And therefore, the decisions that we make will be fallen. And therefore, in our fallen state, we are not capable of choosing the right.
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We cannot choose to do good in the divine sense. Because you can look around, people choose to do what we call to be good things all the time.
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Benevolent things, acts of mercy, lots of people do this all the time. But these are not good in the sense that God defines good.
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They are not good in the sense that they will earn us merit before him. And so when we say that man is incapable of doing anything good, that's what we're talking about.
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We are incapable in our fallen state of doing anything to earn ourselves merit with God, before God.
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But these choices that we make, these choices that we make, we are responsible for them.
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We are responsible for the choices that we take. Voluntarily. Now, and again, an animal is not.
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If you're down in the bayou, in Louisiana and you dangle your hand in the water and the alligator comes along and bites it off, we do not arrest the alligator and put him on trial.
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Why? Because he is not a moral being. That's what alligators do. That's what
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God created the alligator to do. Oh, something in the water, chomp, you know. Well, a man, if a man cuts your hand off, what do we do?
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We arrest him. We put him on trial and put the appropriate penalties for that because man is a moral creature and is responsible for his actions in a way that an animal is not.
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We might take an animal and put it down. We might destroy a vicious dog, but we don't try him.
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We might take him away from us, put him away from us, and destroy him just to keep him from harming us further.
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But that's not the same thing as us trying someone and then putting that person in jail because the dog is not morally responsible for what it does.
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We are. OK. What do we say to the idea that if choices are real, they cannot be caused by God?
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Well, that's the wrong approach. Too many scriptures affirm that God does control things through his providence.
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And we are starting to close in on the final argument or the ultimate argument here. The real argument is, are you going to accept the testimony of scripture or not?
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That's where we're really going with this. The Bible is very clear. God does cause all things that happen, but he does so in a way that upholds our ability to make willing, responsible choices for which we are held accountable.
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And I'll say that again. God ultimately causes all things that happen, but he does this in a way that upholds our ability to make willing, responsible choices for which we are accountable.
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And so you promptly ask the question, how does he do that? And I'll give you my answer.
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I don't know. But he does because the scripture says he does that.
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And that is the final authority or should be the final authority. The scripture says he does that.
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And therefore, the fact that I cannot fully grasp how he does that should be irrelevant because the scripture says this is the way it is.
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But they are. They are, yes. Because first of all,
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God does not choose to explain everything he does to us.
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See, God is a sovereign God. And one of the things about sovereignty is you don't have to explain yourself to anybody.
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That's one of the things that it means to be sovereign. A sovereign king says this is the way it is, and that's the way it is.
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He doesn't have to answer himself to anyone. As MacArthur puts it in one of his commentaries,
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I forget which one, but he says, human reasoning is inadmissible where God has not chosen to give us explanations in his word.
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He has told us specifically that there are some things which are his mysteries, and they are restricted to him.
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They are not for us to know. There are other things where he says, my ways are higher than your ways.
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What he's saying gently, because he's a God of mercy and a
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God of love, but he says sort of gently, like we say to our children sometime, you really can't understand this.
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Your minds are not capable of grasping this concept. And don't we say that to our own kids as they grow up?
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You know, your child comes upon you, and you are engaged in some analysis of something.
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You're balancing the checkbook or something, and what are you doing, daddy? And you give a short answer, well, how are you doing that?
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Well, you can't really understand right now, because you don't have the mental processes and capacities to understand what
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I'm doing. So just know that I'm doing this for your good. And God says that to us.
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Yeah. Yes, the question was sometimes people do make the argument that, well,
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Psalms and Job are a language of poetry and high drama, which they are, or what
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Job is anyway. And you can't base theology on that. My answer to that is, why not? Because what does the scripture say?
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All scripture, all scripture, not all scripture except for Job and Psalms and Revelation.
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You hear this about Revelation a lot. You know, all scripture is given by inspiration of God.
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It's God breathed. And all scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.
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So that would be my answer to that argument. But you're right, I .J., that argument does come up.
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It's sort of like what Dr. White was talking about. You know, if certain books don't fit our thesis, well, those books are not really part of the canon.
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And, you know, we can just sort of dismiss them and get rid of it that way. You cannot deny either aspect of what
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God has done and how God works, where scripture clearly affirms that this is what happens.
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And so that brings us to the next giant killer. There's always people that, you know,
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I think Tommy Nelson, one little aside here, Tommy Nelson talks to college groups a lot.
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And he says, you know, there's always, particularly with the freshmen, there's always somebody that comes up with the same questions every time, you know, and, well, what about the problem of evil?
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And he said, the expression is always the same. They think that nobody's ever thought about this before.
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I got you now, you know. And it just stuns them when he can come up with an answer for that.
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And so what about the problem of evil? Well, that's going to be next Sunday that we are going to talk about because this is, it is a problem.
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I don't want to make light of it. Evil does exist. Evil is real.
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And yet God says that he is not the author of evil. He does not do evil.
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Nothing he does is evil. And yet the Bible also clearly says that God causes evil.
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So you can think about that all week. Now, I want to leave you because in the providence of God, we might not be here next week, right?
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So I want to leave you with a closing thought that you can also think about all week.
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This comes directly out of Calvin's Institutes. Because John Calvin got the same objections that we get today he got back then, and perhaps he was a little more eloquent in his answer.
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He says, let those for whom this seems harsh consider for a little while how bearable their squeamishness is in refusing a thing attested by clear scriptural proofs, because it exceeds their mental capacity.
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And find fault that things are not put forth publicly, that things are put forth publicly, which if God had not judged useful for men to know, he would never have bidden his prophets and apostles to teach.
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For our wisdom ought to be nothing else than to embrace with humble teachableness, and at least without finding fault whatever is taught in sacred scripture.
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As I said earlier, that's the ultimate position. As Dr.
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White talked about, the Bible is the only infallible rule for life.
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And godliness. And so, if the scripture teaches it, we have to accept it.
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We really don't have any other choice. But this whole thing,
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Calvin is reiterating the dangers inherent in basing our conclusions on our human reasoning and experience, rather than what the scripture says.
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Whenever we find ourselves ready to start saying, well, I just don't understand, right there, that should be a red flag.
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Because the fact that we don't understand it does not invalidate it, if the scripture says that it's true.
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So let's close there. Our Heavenly Father, we come before you acknowledging that we do not understand and grasp your ways, but we thank you,
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Father, and praise you that you have reached down to us, you have revealed yourself to us, and you do direct our steps, because we acknowledge that we are not prepared, and we are not capable, and we are not wise enough to direct our steps ourselves.
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And so, Father, we thank you and praise you that you hold the universe together. We pray for the remainder of the service this morning, and we pray particularly for our pastor and for his family.
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We know that this is a time of grieving for them, because even though you have taken one of your servants to glory, they have lost a mother and a grandmother.
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And so, Father, we would pray your blessing upon them and the peace that passes understanding for them.